


Echoes

by 26stars



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: AOS Fic Net 2.0's Mid-Year Fic Exchange, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Season/Series 05, going back to my roots, good old fashioned missing scene may+daisy hurt/comfort, so much to unpack from the Robin storyline but this is a start at least
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-26
Updated: 2018-07-26
Packaged: 2019-06-16 15:50:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,507
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15440436
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/26stars/pseuds/26stars
Summary: May never wanted Daisy to grow up to be just like her





	Echoes

The clothes she’s worn since arriving in this time and place are caked with dust, blown into the fabric by the wind on the surface, beaten into it by too many blows taken in the past day. Some places bear darker patches where blood has soaked in too, both May’s own and that of others.

She’s known for a long time that it’s much easier to get blood off her skin than out of her clothes, though the metaphor remains true that it’s impossible to ever really get it off her hands.

Most of the past few days have felt like a bad dream—too unbelievable, too surreal, for May to actually feel the emotions that ought to come along with the experiences.

Shock at finding themselves in space, years into the future.

Horror at learning what has happened to their world since they left it.

Rage over losing both Daisy and Jemma to the blue-skinned emperor of the barren rock the survivors have fled to.

Disbelief at looking up from the arena and seeing Fitz sitting by his side and ordering her down to the surface (as well as cold amusement that he would dare call her a “has-been” when she could hear).

Astonishment at meeting anyone besides roaches on the Earth’s surface. Amazement at finding her team’s plane still intact.

She doesn’t have enough synonyms for ‘shock’ to cover what she felt at the sight of a woman well into her seventies holding the tiny wooden toy May had seen not so long ago in her present time, or at the revelations that woman delivered to May, minutes before dying in her arms.

All the feelings, all the natural emotional responses, have manifested on the other side of bullet-proof glass. She’s paid attention to the pain in her leg—it’s a message from her body that she needs to acknowledge if she wants it to function. The pain of the experiences of the past few days is not like that. Melinda May learned long ago how to manage the storm inside her, to control it rather than allow it to control her. Emotions do not have to be feared—they just have to be put to work in the right ways, wind turbines in a hurricane.

And more than likely, she’ll be tapping this well for years.

The Zephyr seems to echo around them as their tiny team traipses back inside from the howling, arid world that their home planet has become. It had not been easy to dig a hole deep enough to lay a body to rest in, but May supposes it never should be. Some of the unfamiliar faces from the Zephyr had joined them at the gravesite, saying the only words that were said as Coulson and Fitz laid the quilt-shrouded body in the earth together. They had all helped to push the dirt and stone back on top of it, to tread the ground firm in the hopes that the woman beneath it would lie undisturbed for the rest of time.

There’s more than one reason gravestones often read ‘Rest in Peace’.

Now, back in the plane as daylight starts to fade outside, they all set to work on taking stock of the plane, to find out if they can make this old bird fly again. No one needs to be told where their work is at, all automatically falling in line with their old responsibilities. Fitz on the hardware, Daisy on the software, Jemma on provisions, Coulson on human resources.

May takes herself to the cockpit.

It doesn’t seem to have been fully converted into a bedroom, but it is clear that the relatively airy space was where Robin spent plenty of her time. There are scraps of thin fabric hung over the windscreen and most of the instruments, the chairs are mostly disassembled, and crates and clutter cover most of the floor. May begins by finding an empty-enough box and gathering the smaller items into it. She pulls down the drapery until she can see the yellow dusk outside the unbroken windscreen. She moves the makeshift seating out of the way, then finds the pieces of the pilots’ chairs and fits them back together.

When she can’t put it off any longer though, she starts to pull down the drawings.

Each paper is hung with the tiniest scrap of tape, as though someone were trying to stretch their last piece as far as possible. May lifts each one down carefully and stacks them on the pilot’s chair, monochrome sketches that are far from carefree doodles of imagination—every pencil stroke seems saturated with intention and worry.

Big men with long swords.

Palm trees on a beach.

People huddled in terror among fearsome creatures.

The planet breaking apart.

A dark-haired little girl with a darker-haired mother…

May’s emotions linger on the other side of that thick glass, waiting.

“The last time I saw her, she was four years old,” Daisy’s voice comes from close behind her. “Back when I was away from SHIELD. I gave her the wooden robin that her dad had made for her.”

May can’t bring herself to look back at Daisy, so she keeps her eyes on the task in front of her. 

“I’d never met her before,” May comments as she adds more papers to the pile on the chair. “I wouldn’t have known who she was if it hadn’t been for the toy robin.”

_The mission with Robin’s father, Charles, a different kind of Seer._

The last time their team had tried to change the future.

“I wasn’t fast enough,” Daisy says quietly then, a note of emotion in her voice that rings a warning bell in May’s mind, makes her finally turn towards the girl behind her. Daisy still bears marks from her fight with Sinara the day before, still seems to be finding her balance in the absence of her powers, inhibited by the device behind her ear, but there is something in her eyes now too that was not there when she had stumbled into the plane that afternoon. Something that had not been there when she practically ran into May’s arms in relief at the sight of her.

May looks at her protégé now and hates that she recognizes the familiar sentiment, hates that she’s seeing it in this girl’s eyes now.

“You did your best,” May tries to assure her, because she knows it must be true—whatever the outcome, Daisy would not have let anyone hurt Robin if she could have prevented it.

“If I’d had my powers, I could have stopped Voss from stabbing her,” Daisy murmurs, her hand feinting towards the device on her neck. “But I was too far away—I didn’t think he would really…”

That dissonant note quivers in her voice again, and May puts down the drawing in her hand without picking another one up.

“She didn’t run, she didn’t even flinch—“ Daisy breathes as May turns and reaches for her arm.

“Because she knew,” she says quietly, squeezing Daisy’s elbow gently and drawing the girl’s gaze to hers. “She said it, when Coulson and I talked to her before. She knew today was the day her story would end.”

Daisy has tears lurking behind her eyes as she looks towards the ceiling, forcing them to wait, pressing them back with the heel of her hand.

“I had promised her dad…” Daisy stops to take two deep breaths, then tries again. “Before he died, he said he hoped I could help his daughter…and I promised I would take care of her…”

Her throat audibly closes up, so May pulls Daisy into her arms.

The girl has always been barely taller than her, but Daisy suddenly feels very small as she curls into May’s embrace, holding back with only one arm while her other hand hides her face.

“You did your best, Daisy,” May repeats quietly, holding her up. “You did good.”

_May, you did good._

_Let the girl go._

She had not wanted to hear those words back then either. She hadn’t listened anyway. She had carried the face of that tiny, brown-haired, gifted girl in her mind every day after that, unable to even consider forgetting what had happened to her—what she’d done to her.

But this is different. Daisy did not pull the trigger, did not plunge in the knife. May does not know what the Robin back in their present looks like, what little girl Daisy is remembering as she weeps against her shoulder, but somewhere out there in the timeline they left, that little girl is still breathing, still alive and whole, waiting for them to come back and make things right.

 “You did good, Daisy,” May whispers again, holding on tighter, feeling a wet spot on her shoulder where Daisy’s face presses and her tears soak through the dust.

_Let it go, Daisy._

_Don’t pick up the burden of a life you couldn’t save._

“Let the girl go, Daisy.”

_I’ll take it from here._


End file.
